Kevin & I had a fantastic weekend away visiting family and we went to two, yes TWO, amazing computer museums.
The first one was the Centre for Computing History, in Cambridge, where Clive Sinclair started up his computer company with a pocket calculator. Oh, I was like a child in a sweet shop! I loved every minute of it. Our first computer (back in 1981) was a Sinclair ZX81, and we also owned a ZX Spectrum later on. They had pretty much every computer we’ve ever owned, except for the ones we built ourselves.
This was Douglas Adams’ Apple Macintosh. He was the first person in the UK to own one; Stephen Fry was the 2nd. He wrote his Hitch-hiker’s Guide books on it. I nearly cropped out the towel sitting on top, then I remembered that everybody should know where their towel is! Another person who’d given their computer to the museum was David Arnold. He’d written most of his early film music on an Atari (I think), but I didn’t take a pic.
The other museum was the National Museum of Computing, in Block H at Bletchley Park. We’d been to Bletchley Park many years ago, not long after it had opened up to the public, but weren’t able to see the computer museum as it was only open on certain days back then. This time we didn’t go into the actual house, just the museum. Had some very interesting chats with the volunteer staff who were all at least as old as us, if not older. We were able to see the Bombe working, and Colossus. There was an Enigma machine and lots more. I thoroughly recommend both museums whether you’re a geek or not.
We had one of these! It’s 40 years old this year! The next pic is from a cabinet of calculators. Kevin had one of these watches, and I used to use stamps like the ones at the back for stamping the dates into library books.
On our way home we got stuck in traffic on the M6 after a lorry broke down. One and a half hours!! During which we had rain, hail, and sun… We stopped off in Ironbridge (or Coalbrookdale to give it it’s proper name) afterwards. The sun had come out by then, but the wind was cold. I took this picture of the war memorial only because it has the name of the father of one of my Dad’s ex-wives on it!
Well, that’s me for this week. Hwyl am y tro!